The biggest loss of civilian life in London during the Second World War came not because a bomb hit but because of a disaster that has largely been forgotten about today.

A stampede is when a crowd 'rushes wildly in a sudden mass panic' and while you probably think of horses or cattle when you hear the word, it can of course happen among humans too.

Stampedes that have happened in our more immediate past bring shock and terror to everyone else who reads about them because they seem easily preventable. But if you're caught in a stampede, your chances of survival are low.

Most recently they have occurred in stadiums - Hillsborough, Burnden Park and Ibrox - but the disaster we're specifically talking about occurred in a place that thousands of people still use every day.

Finally everyone who lost their lives in this tragedy got a memorial in 2017

The London Underground.

"A single searchlight pointed upwards and the deafening sirens suddenly went off"

As you might already know, Underground stations were used as mass air raid shelters in London during the war.

Some became serious tools in keeping Londoners safe, for instance Clapham South had the capacity for 8,000 people, each who could have their own bed. This was despite the fact the government knew for sure that Tube stations were the safest option when a bomb raid was due.

Then again, they helped people feel safe, and would have been a massive goal in itself.

That was, until the disaster of March 1943.

Bethnal Green station has a dark past

At 8.17pm on March 3, when London was in blackout, a single searchlight pointed upwards and the deafening sirens suddenly went off.

The country was afraid of a retaliation after Berlin had been bombed for two days straight by Allied forces.

Just ten minutes after that siren went off, there was a whirring noise that sounded just like bombs.

In reality it was the sound of an imitative anti-aircraft rocket launching, but how could the average Londoner know this?

The answer is, they didn't.

"People starting falling over and piling on top of each other, uncontrollably"

In the moment that the buzzing filled the capital, hundreds of people in the East London area of Bethnal Green headed for the old Tube station.

It had been open since the 1930s but no Central line train had graced it with its presence as yet.

If you're able to picture it, there were a great many people heading towards one station entrance, a bit like what can happen when an area is busy now. This was exacerbated by three bus loads of people getting off and heading to the station too.

The stairwell in the station is extremely narrow, just 15 x 11 ft and it wasn't well lit at all. So despite the Metropolitan Borough having endlessly campaigned for better access to the station, the request was still being turned down by the Home Office. It still brought danger.

On that dreaded day, it had also been raining, so the first few steps had also become quite wet.

The Bethnal Green disaster was a colossal disaster in which 173 people lost their lives

Initially people entering the station were fairly calm and orderly. That is until one woman and a young child fall before they reach the bottom of the steps. As with other crowd crashes, it's a domino affect. And elderly man falls over the woman and child who have stumbled and then more and more people start to tumble. Those at the back have no clue what is happening at the front, and anyway, it's virtually impossible to turn around in a crowd so large.

As is inevitable, people start to either get claustrophobic or, at the least, too hot. They panic. And people starting falling over and piling on top of each other, uncontrollably. There's no real way out in such a narrow space, when no-one can see much ahead or to the side of them.

There's no police or anyone around to jump to the aid of the more and more helpless crowd as people suffocate and get crushed.

Eventually, a single off-duty police officer and several air raid wardens hear screams coming from inside the station and manage to hold people at the back of the queue back.

What they discover is nothing but a tragedy.

"Too little, too late"

In a matter of seconds what was an orderly operation descended into a disaster that cost many people their lives.

The bodies of 27 men, 84 women and 62 children were pulled from the station. Somewhere between 60 and 90 more people, those towards the back of the queue, were taken to hospital for their injuries.

The result was devastating

In a tragedy of such scale, there was no way the War Office would let the full extent of what happened at Bethnal Green get into the ears of the general public, even though journalists tried. Instead the public were told Bethnal Green had been the direct target of a bomb raid.

What took place next was really too little too late. The stairway entrance to Bethnal Green station was made safer by adding a central hand rail (which the borough had been asking for for ages) as well as proper lighting. Some ten years after the accident happened, the surviving relatives of the 173 who died are paid compensation. In the 1990s, a plaque was put up at Bethnal Green in rememberance.

A Stairway to Heaven

Raymond Lechmere, a survivor of the 1943 tragedy, in front of the Stairway to Heaven memorial

Feeling upset that more had not been done, some of the survivors and relatives of those in the Bethnal Green disaster decided to take action.

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Finally, at the end of 2017, artist Harry Paticas made "Stairway to Heaven", a wooden stairway displaying the names of all 173 victims of the disaster with 173 holes to let the light shine through.

It was unveiled outside the East London station on December 16 (2017), there, finally, to remind today's Londoners of the horror that struck people on that fateful day around three quarters of a century ago.